Any teachers out there ? - what actually happens on "Inset days " ?

dizzyrascal

My sister (is a teacher) and she is in school at 7.00 am everyday and not home again till 6.00 pm. I work from 9-5 and I would never consider getting to work at this time in the morning unless I had loads of work on.
She also gets into school at the same time in the holidays for many days. This summer she did another week after the school closed and she will be back in a week before school starts. Then there is all the marking and lesson prep that she does over the weekend.
My son-in-law works all day every Sunday to prepare lesson plans too.
Not quite the easy job you are describing.

walby1993

In response to varies posters on this thread:

Yes, taxpayers do contribute towards teachers wages, I am sure, along withdoctors, nurses, police officers, firefighters and all manner of councilworkers wages, plus a large amount towards benefits and into the pension’s pot.I would also like to point out that teachers are also taxpayers - I myself havepaid out over £2700 in the last year in tax plus another £1600 in NI payments.

A teacher's job is bloody hard (as, I am sure, are lots of other jobs) butwe do not do anything like a 9am - 3:30pm. On an average day, I arrive atschool at around 8am and work until at least 6pm (longer on the days where wehave after school meetings/training and on our twice weekly help sessions).Yes, in theory we have a 20 minute break plus 45 minutes for lunch - in reality, I spend most of my 20 minute breaks getting ready for the next class (tidyingclassroom, getting out resources for next lesson, writing the date, title, aim and starter on the board) as well as doing my complusory beak duty once a week.I also tend to lose at least ten minutes of my lunch everyday dealing withchildren (either because they have done something wrong or because they wouldlike a bit more help with the work) as well as time spent preparing for thenext class. I usually have about enough time to quickly eat something for lunchbut that is about it. So, that adds up to about 9.5 hours on an average dayplus two hours per week on after school help sessions, 38 weeks of the year,which would total (195 x 9.5) + (2 x 38) = 1852.5 + 76 = 1928.5 hours. On top of this there are parent's evenings, open evenings and presentation eveningswhere our attendance is compulsory. At my school, each of these evenings lastat least three hours and there are about ten of these a year, adding another 30 hours worked, giving a total of 1958.5 hours per year. I have not included attendance to other events which many of us attend to give pupils our support(results days, prom, charity events at the weekend, etc) nor the work I do most weekends. Compare this to my last job (office worker) where I worked 7.5 hours a day, 232 days of the year, giving a total of 1740 hours a year. I earned asimilar salary to what I do now, plus I could go to the toilet when I wanted,make a cup of tea when I fancied it and have a proper lunch break so that I didn't feel mentally exhausted at the end of the day. Oh, and I never got told to "f*ck off" by clients.

Teachers struggle to discipline some children because they haven't beentaught manners by their parents in the first place. Lots of our students are lovely and their parents are very supportive of the school and strongly push for good manners and a good work ethic in their children. There are a good proportion of what I deem "ok parents", they say all the right things but let their children get away with things for an easy life. These children can be a pain but are, generally, manageable. Then there are the parents who believe it is the teachers'/school's/the police's/the Government's/anyone-else-they-can-think-of's fault that their children are not doing well in life when it is quite obvious they don't have the faintest idea what it is to be a good parent. These children are the most difficult to control as they have no respect or recognition of any sort of authority, they can be compulsive liars, are very often attention seeking and sometimes very aggressive.We deal with these children as best we can, through detentions, counselling, anger management, family help from social services etc but it has become a very difficult (read "nigh-on-impossible") to permanently expel a pupilthus leaving schools in very difficult situations.

Yes, there are some awful teachers - my school has got rid of five in thelast two years and I have a feeling that at least another one will be gone by Christmas. Some schools, however, hang on to these teachers as they have a great difficulty in getting anyone to want to teach there because of the bad reputation, thus putting themselves into a catch-22 situation.

And in response to the OP, as many others have stated, this is not taken off the number of days your child(ren) attend school - there is a legal requirementfor schools to be open for 190 teaching days per year. I appreciate thatholidays can cause difficulties in terms of childcare arrangements but schools have had this set up for an awfully long time, something that you should have considered when you had children (equally, there are different difficultieswith childcare arrangements for teachers which they should also consider when having children).

whitesatin

I have contributed my bit to this "debate", which turns up regularly on forums.

I was just thinking back to my primary days in the 50s/early 60s, when we loved it when we got a long playtime because the teachers were having a meeting.

At least they don't do that these days. I don't remember being supervised at playtime either.

sgun

Those who can, teach. Those who can't, complain.

Hmm71

I was at junior school in the 70s and seniors in the 80s and there was always at least one teacher in the playground at playtime. The dinner ladies tended to take over at lunchtime, presumably so the poor teachers could have their lunch in peace.
I seem to remember the teacher in juniors walking around the playground but in seniors there were usually two teachers to each yard, just standing at the top, and probably desperate for a cigarette

Hmm71

annie1975 wrote: »

The powers they have taken away is,your not allowed to give them a clip round the earlug now,without interfering. I know there is sometimes other ways of dealing with it, but a clip never did any harm years ago.

Yes it did, my dad's uncle had his eardrum shattered by someone clipping him round the ear.

Wicked_witch

I was going to ask about that. I completely support inset days but I noticed that at both my son's schools they would give holiday dates then closer to the time add inset days, which gives the impression of adding extra holiday time. I can see how some parents would get annoyed at that, especially if they've arranged childcare based on the original dates.

Actually even as typing the above I've realised that it's probably due to the school having to arrange and confirm dates the training company can come in long after initial term dates are decided?:o

Slinky wrote: »

The mistake the schools make with 'inset' days is identifying them as such. When I was a child, you went to school in term time, you didn't go to school on what were called school holidays. It never occured to me to wonder how much time if any in my school holidays, teachers were working or whether they were on training days.

Why do the schools need to identify these training or inset days? What actual benefit is it to parents?

thegirlintheattic

Wicked_witch wrote: »

I was going to ask about that. I completely support inset days but I noticed that at both my son's schools they would give holiday dates then closer to the time add inset days, which gives the impression of adding extra holiday time. I can see how some parents would get annoyed at that, especially if they've arranged childcare based on the original dates.

Actually even as typing the above I've realised that it's probably due to the school having to arrange and confirm dates the training company can come in long after initial term dates are decided?:o

Suggest you speak to the school/LEA if that is really the case. INSET dates in most LEAs are set when the term dates are set and available to parents two years ahead. The ones at the start of the year are, in most places, the two days before term re-starts for students.

Very little training is provided by external companies FYI.

chiefgoobster

Sambucus_Nigra wrote: »

Most people work 4 weeks a month, ie 20 days.

Do they consider that a full time job?

Or should everyone flail themselves with hemp rope and pour acid on their wounds if they don't work 24/7, 365 just to earn a crust?[/QUOTE]

I'm sorry I started this damn thread....but i can't help laughing at your comment :rotfl:

thanks

mountainofdebt

chiefgoobster wrote: »

.It seems the major school holidays are long enough - too long in my opinion (but that's another matter) -

I may be wrong but I think the reason for the long summer break is historic when the UK was mainly agriculltural and the children wereexpected to help.

But as we're no longer mainly agricultural based perhaps we're long over due for a rethink on the length of the summer break